


Despite Everything

by crabbynsfw



Category: Rick and Morty
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Hurt/Comfort, Other, Reader-Insert, Smut, Unhealthy Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2018-04-18
Packaged: 2018-12-17 09:41:31
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 8,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11848932
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crabbynsfw/pseuds/crabbynsfw
Summary: Despite everything – despite the fact that this man could literally destroy your universe if he felt so inclined – you pity him.





	1. Chapter 1

You’re jolted awake in the dead of night, pulled out of a deep sleep, by an insistent but irregular knocking at your door. You roll out of bed and start fumbling around, looking for pants, and glance at the clock on your bedside table.

2:46 AM.

By the time you get to the door with pants on, the person on the other side is moaning, “Open uuuuuuuuup.”

You open the door and Rick is there, because of course it’s Rick, and if your brain hadn’t been foggy with sleep you would’ve realized it much sooner. He’s resting his full body weight against the door frame and is clearly fucked up.

“Y-y-yyy-you told me to – to knock next time instead of portaling into y-your, your bedro – ooOUURP – room, so I knocked,” he says. He wobbles forward a little, nearly tumbling into your apartment, before righting himself.

“Thanks,” you say, only half meaning it.

“I-I-III – I’m wasted,” he says.

“Yup,” you say.

He pushes past you and stumbles inside and sort of falls onto your couch face-first.

You sigh. “Rick, why are you here?”

“Missed you,” he says. It’s genuine and you melt a little because, despite everything, it’s meaningful that you’ve somehow captured even the tiniest piece of the heart of the smartest man in the multiverse.

“Aaalso I built a neutrino bomb some – UUUURP – somewhere an-and I don’t remember where,” he continues, and you feel a little less warm-hearted. “Wanted to – to make sure I didn’t blow you up. I-I-I, I was here, right? Earlier?”

“No,” you say, helping him roll onto his side so he doesn’t suffocate against the couch cushion. “I haven’t seen you in days.”

His brow furrows and he stares into the middle distance and he looks like he’s thinking harder than he’s ever thought. It’s almost endearing to see a genius reduced to the cognitive skills of a baby. A very smart baby.

“No,” he insists, “I was – I was here… I was loo-oooUURGH.” He pauses to fight back rising bile. “I was looking at your face. I-I-I, I remember looking at your face. Tonight.”

“You weren’t here. Promise,” you tell him.

He thinks a little harder and his brow relaxes as he reaches some kind of conclusion. “Ooooh, shiiit,” he says, and he starts chuckling a little and tries to talk between laughs. “I was – I was just – It was pictures! I was just looking at pictures of you!” He laughs more and then chokes and coughs, and a bit of drool seeps out of his mouth. “Oh, my God.”

“Let me get this straight,” you say, sighing and sitting on the arm rest of the couch. “You looked at pictures of me earlier tonight, then built a bomb, and couldn’t remember where you _put_ the bomb, so you came here because you remembered seeing me earlier.”

“There – there was some other stuff. I-I-I, I did a lot of stuff tonight.” He rubs at his eyes like a child would, his hands balled into fists and connecting with his eyelids with all the dexterity of a four year old.

“I’m sure you did,” you say, fully aware of Rick’s inclination to just start building and destroying shit whenever he was shitfaced. “Should we be worrying about where you _did_ put the bomb?”

“It – it’s fine,” he says, blearily reaching up to pat your thigh. “Probably – probably doesn’t even work. Probably left it some – somewhere unimportant.”

You frown. “Typical.”

He raises his head to look at you, but it quickly goes crashing back down to the cushion. He half-kicks his leg over the side of the couch as though he was going to make an effort to stand up, and then changed his mind. “W-whu - what’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you don’t care about anything, Rick, so I shouldn’t have expected different,” you say, and it’s not quite true and you know it’s not, but it’s easier and shorter to say than the truth is. You say it because underneath everything you feel for Rick, there’s resentment. The same resentment anyone who comes close to Rick feels to some degree.

“That’s not true,” he says, sounding vaguely offended and angry. “My – my family –”

He cuts himself off and stares blankly at the wall, his mouth pressed in a hard line.

You stand up and look at him.

Like this, he almost looks like a regular, sad, old man. With his intelligence currently partly stolen from him by buckets worth of alcohol and whatever the hell else he put into his body to numb himself, he looks dazed, half there, like an elderly dementia patient.  In the bad, dim lighting of your living room, his skinny body looks even more sallow and sick than usual. His face is red and you can’t tell if it’s from the alcohol, or because he’s holding in drunken tears. His hair is a fucking disaster and there are stains on his shirt and lab coat, at least half of which are probably from his own drool. His limbs are limp like he’s given up on moving for the rest of his life and his face is blank like he’s decided to wait to die, right here on your couch.

Despite everything – despite the fact that this man could literally destroy your universe if he felt so inclined – you pity him. He’s a genius, but he doesn’t know what the fuck to do with himself any more than you do.

He knows you know that, and you can never tell if he keeps you around in spite of it, or if it’s the only reason he hangs out with you in the first place.

“Go to sleep, Rick,” you tell him, and he only barely bothers to look up and scoff at you.

You leave to fetch him a blanket, but he’s already snoring by the time you come back with one. You tuck him in anyway.

Rick curls into the fetal position. There’s still a little bit of cushion room on the couch. You observe it for a moment, contemplating.

You grab vodka from your kitchen, sit on the couch, and listen to Rick’s wheezy snoring while drinking straight from the bottle until you pass out.


	2. Chapter 2

You aren't dumb.

Rick says you are, but you know you're not. He only says it because, comparatively, everyone seems dumb to him.

But you're not dumb, so you've learned to be careful with how much power you let Rick wield over you. If you give him an inch, he'll take a mile. If you tell him a deep, dark fear at 3 AM after several shots, he'll eventually use it against you to get something he wants.

(You won't make that mistake again.)

And when Rick comes to you asking for a favor, you know when to pick your battles. When he asks you help him steal a copy of a movie he wants to see before it's released, you shrug your shoulders and agree, because it's not worth getting into an argument and having him exact some petty revenge on you later. When he asks you to suit up and join him some fucking space war that you have no context for or stake in, you tell him no, and kick your feet up and sip a soda while he gripes at you, because he whatever revenge he picks won't be worse than actually, literally dying in deep space.

You're not dumb, so you know that the people who stick around in Rick's life are the people who go along with most of his shit, but not all of it.

The people who cower and kiss his feet and do whatever they're asked to do? He'll keep them around for a while, as a lackey or a plaything, and eventually he'll get tired and discard them. Rick isn't interested in Yes Men, not in the long term. He doesn't need people to tell him he's right - he already knows. It bores him.

It takes a lot to occupy a massively complex mind. He probably wouldn't ever admit it, but he loves drama. He loves to be occupied and challenged and tested, even if it's with some petty shitty argument, like whether that fake no-freeze ice cream people make with bananas is really ice cream. Because if his mind isn't occupied, it's like a train running a million miles an hour with no tracks and he can't control where it ends up, and god forbid he might do some introspective thinking.

So, he dulls everything with drugs or hangs around people who challenge him. He likes people with a certain level of grit, enough to hold their own against him but not so much that they suck all the fun out his adventures.

And after the shit you've been through, you've got grit. You’ve proven it to him over and over.

You wonder when he’ll finally cut you some slack.

* * *

 

You look down at your ankle as Rick sends his ship hurtling through space at a speed you couldn’t comprehend if you tried.

It’s swollen, sprained, possibly broken. It was lucky that you’d injured it after Rick had gotten what he’d come for. You’d hobbled back to the ship as Rick ribbed you for slipping on the wet pavement on a planet with much more dangerous things than puddles. He didn’t reach out for you, didn’t offer you a shoulder to lean on.

You wonder if he didn’t offer because he didn’t want to insult you, because he thought you were tough enough to handle it, or because he just didn’t give a shit.

In your periphery you can see Rick glance at you, and then follow your gaze down to your ankle.

“I-it doesn’t look that bad,” he says. “Let’s hole up somewhere for the night and you can drink until you pass out and sleep it off.”

“You think that guy is gonna come after us? We need to lay low?”

He snorts. “Are you kidding? Y-you – did you see the look on that motherfucker’s face when we left? I think he pissed himself.”

“Then why are we staying out in space for the night instead of going home?”

Rick stares straight ahead and doesn’t answer, and you decide not to push the issue.

It’s not so bad, sitting in a hotel in a space station and getting drunk on mysterious liquids with Rick. This isn’t your first time and it likely won’t be your last.

You’re surprised when he pulls into a station absolutely crawling with people. There’s a heavy tourist flow here, you can tell by all the aliens taking photos and how many different languages you can pick out in the chatter around you. Rick pulls his backpack, full of his spoils from today’s adventure, out of the trunk of his ship as you look around.

You don’t mention it as Rick leads you through a massive throng of people and through a door. He talks to the person behind the desk, and you’re not paying attention, instead perusing the ads plastered all over the screen by the entrance, like a digital bulletin board. You’re pulled away from it when you notice Rick’s raising his voice, getting angry about something. You look over to see him pull out a wad of some kind of currency – it looks imbedded with some kind of shiny material, probably something that gives it universal value – and when he smacks it on the receptionist’s desk, her eyes widen and she starts making phone calls.

Shortly after, she hands Rick two keycards. He passes you one and heads to the elevator.

“What was that all about?” you ask, limping after him.

He mashes a button and the elevator pings as the doors close. “All the good rooms were booked, so I paid double to get one with a view.”

“View of what?” you press.

“Annual space whale migration,” he says, looking bored.

“Space whales?” you echo him.

“I mean, they’re not called that, obviously. Th-they’re called something stupid like ‘sleepslurbs’ or whatever. But, to simplify it for you, they’re massive creatures that eventually evolved to survive off-planet, and they float through space and eat whatever ends up in their mouth as they move, like whales.”

Immediately, you feel giddy. You try not to let it show too much but you know you’re smiling dumbly. Part of the reason you stick with Rick – other than being enamored with him – is because of the incredible creatures you got to see on adventures. Shit you could never, ever see back on Earth. You know that out here it’s all the norm, but the fact that this event is apparently drawing in tourists means it must be something pretty special.

The two of you exit the elevator and he stops at one of the doors, which makes a heavy clunking sound when he holds the keycard up to the scanner. The inside is kind of impressive – a sizable, dome-shaped room with a huge circular window that stretches from the floor up into about half of the curved ceiling, letting you see out of the station and into space. The resulting effect is as if you’re in a bubble designed for viewing celestial events.

There’s only one bed, but that’s okay. You’ve shared a bed with Rick before out of necessity, and occasionally just because you felt like it. You perch on the edge of it and stare out the window while he plops his bag down and starts pulling out bottles. He hands you one and you take a swig immediately, hoping it’ll numb the throbbing in your ankle.

“How long until it starts?” you ask, laying down and letting your legs dangle off the side of the mattress.

Rick belches loudly and lies down next to you. “Hhh – how should I know?”

You shrug and lift your head just enough to take another sip without spilling the drink all over yourself. He seems more relaxed today than usual. Maybe it’s because the excursion went so well, or maybe he’s just in a good mood.

He’s silent, just taking swigs from his own bottle, and it gives you more time than you would like to think. You wonder if this is supposed to be a reward for you, a prize for helping him so often. You wonder if he’s doing this for you just because. He seems bored as hell, so he’s not here and he didn’t drop all that cash because it’s something he wanted to see.

It strikes you that your relationship with Rick is hovering somewhere between friends and lovers. He considers you at least a friend, you know that much, because he describes you as such to other people. But you’re not _just_ friends, certainly more sexual and, in some ways, intimate than that. But you’re not quite friends with benefits either, it’s occasionally too domestic for that, although this is about as domestic as Rick gets.

He calls you “sweetie” and other pet names sometimes, in the heat of the moment, on the rare occasion where you’re panicking and he’s comforting you, or when he’s cumming inside you and you’re clenching around him and he’s not thinking straight.

You zone out at some point, and jolt back to realty when suddenly Rick lightly smacks your arm.

“Check it out,” he says, sitting up and pointing out the window.

You sit up too, a little dizzily from the alcohol, and look. It’s difficult to judge distance in the vast darkness of space, but it looks far away – a creature, oblong with trailing tentacles, floating from left to right across the window.

You squint. “Looks more like a squid than a whale.”

“Whu – how would you know? Can’t really see it when it’s so far away.”

“Is that it?” you say, disappointed. “Is this really what all those people came to –”

You stop talking when a second creature, much closer and absolutely massive, creeps into view.

The front of it, or its nose or whatever, is rounded and, yes, distinctly whale-like, with a big gaping maw and teeth that look very suited for grinding down debris, but without fins or a blowhole, as far as you can tell. It’s a deep blue color, but as it passes in front of the window, you can see brilliantly neon bioluminescent streaks that eventually spread out to cover the end of the long body. Instead of a tail, there’s a mass of tentacles that billow outward all at once and then collapse inward, pushing it through space like a jellyfish. Towards the end of the tentacles, the colors seem to vibrate and shift hues and it’s so bright you nearly have to look away. It has two massive eyes on the side that faces you, and it glances at your window with indifference.

You watch, slack-jawed with awe, desperately trying to commit this image to memory despite the drug addling your brain. The bottle hangs loosely in your hand, mostly forgotten.

You watch as more and more creep into view in the distance. Dozens. A light show across the blackness of the void.

“Holy shit,” you murmur, your words trailing off into startled laughter.

You glance at Rick. He’s already looking at you, his smirk distinctly smug, but his eyes are soft.

“I knew you’d love this shit,” he says, looking away and out the window, still smirking. “Y-you – you’re like a fuckin’ baby, going all wide eyed at every unusual animal you see. ‘Oooh, woooah, it’s a giraffe but it’s purple, oohh, so amaaaziiiing,’” he mocks you, gesturing his hands in fake excitement, raising his pitch to a falsetto in a very inaccurate impression of your voice.

You laugh again, practically a giggle, even though it wasn’t that funny. He’s teasing because he can’t be sincere, you know that, but he went out of his way to bring you here because he knew you’d like it. That means something. You could mean next to nothing to him tomorrow, but here, right now, this has meaning, and you latch onto it like a drowning man clutches to a life preserver.

Your ankle doesn’t hurt. You wonder if he spiked your drink with a painkiller.

You turn back to the window and lean against his shoulder. He belches loudly, but he doesn’t comment on it and doesn’t push you away.

And right now you’re happy, but you have no idea what kind of place you have in his heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> just thinkin' bout stuff. don't expect these to have too much of a point


	3. Chapter 3

You don’t see Rick again for months.

You texted him once or twice during the first few weeks of no contact. You didn’t really expect an answer, and you didn’t get one.

During the second month, you send him one final message, telling him to contact you if he gives a shit.

By the third month, you assume that he’s decided to cut you off for whatever reason. Maybe you just weren’t interesting enough, maybe you didn’t respond the way he’d hoped that night in the space station. You hadn’t fucked him then, just passed out in front of the window and spilled your drink. Maybe he was hoping that his act of kindness would make you horny, maybe he realized you weren’t a readily available lay all the time or thought you weren’t that into him.

Maybe he just up and died finally. You hadn’t met his family, so they wouldn’t have known to contact you if he did.

You’re surprised when, near the end of the third month, he bashes your window open and crawls inside. You’re on the couch doing stupid Buzzfeed quizzes on your laptop and eating Chinese takeout when he tumbles onto your carpet. His shirt his bloodied and he has a makeshift bandage wrapped around his torso.

“Don’t let them in,” he wheezes, staggering to his feet. “They can’t come in if you tell them no.”

Your first reaction isn’t surprise, it’s anger.

Hot anger searing behind your eyes and beneath your tongue as you start to sit up, your brow furrowing, ready to start yelling. He didn’t just slowly stop talking to you, the way that some friendships naturally fizzle out, he fucking _ghosted_ you, like you’re some chick he got to the third date with and decided he wasn’t into, and now he’s busting through your fucking windows?

You stop. You look at your food. At your stupid Buzzfeed quiz, at the broken glass on your carpet you’re now going to have to pick up later instead of spending a nice, quiet night doing nothing, at the window you’re going to have to repair.

And you have just one thought: No.

You slouch back into your seat and poke at your fried rice. “You didn’t text me,” you say, raising your brow meaningfully.

He gapes at you. “A-are, are you fucking kidding me?” He looks genuinely shocked. “Are y-y-you, are you actually making a big fucking deal about that? Whu-what are you, a stupid teenage girl getting pissed at her shitty boyfriend?”

No.

“I seem to remember asking you to knock from now on, too,” you say, calmly.

His brow lowers dangerously. “I’m being chased by fucking _vampires_ and I don’t have my portal gun.”

“Vampires aren’t real,” you say, instinctively.

“Infinite universes, infinite chances for vampires to exist, dumbass!” he shouts.

There’s a loud knocking at your front door. You stand up to get it.

“A-are you fucking stupid?” Rick hisses at you. “They can’t fucking come in, just tell them to go away.”

Your hand is on the doorknob. “No, I think I’ll let them in.”

Rick immediately pulls out some sort of gun, a kind you don’t recognize. He points at you, at your chest, using both hands, which is strange because most of the time he shoots one-handed and he shouldn’t need to steady his shot at such close range.

“Don’t,” he says, his voice low, his face serious.

“You won’t shoot me,” you say, but you’re not all that sure it’s true.

“Try me,” he says.

This is it. This is the hill you die on. It does feel stupid that it’s about him not texting you back, but it’s also not about that, not really. You’re making a stand now because after being ghosted, it’s obvious he doesn’t respect you the way you thought he might. It’s obvious he’ll keep doing this, keep going through this cycle of keeping you distant until he needs you, keep using you until you’re used up, until you waste away or get killed, and you’ll never have his fucking respect. You have to draw the line somewhere. You have to stop helping him.

It’s time to stop avoiding the short-term harm that you could run into by refusing him, and start planning for the long-term harm of him sucking the goddamn life out of you.

“I’m sorry,” he says, when he sees you aren’t budging, that your hand is still on the knob.

You keep your face blank and just stare at him. He can do the work here, you think. It’s his fucking turn. The people on the other side of the door are pounding on it loudly.

“I went off the grid for a while,” he continues, “I haven’t contacted anyone –”

You tilt your head at him and give him a warning look and he cuts off. Your gut says he’s lying.

You aren’t dumb.

“This goes down one of three ways, Rick,” you say. You reach up, unlock the door, but don’t open it. Rick’s finger twitches against the trigger. “One, you shoot me and wait in my apartment with my corpse until the sun comes up. Two, you don’t shoot me, I let in whatever’s outside and you have to fight your way out of it. Three, you let me have a fucking _iota_ of _dignity_ for _fucking once_ instead of treating me like your _pet_ who only gets a treat when they’re good, and you tell me _the goddamn truth_.”

His gaze flicks to the door, still being pounded on, and then back to you. He’s thinking.

“Option three really seems to be the easiest, Rick,” you say. Your heart is pounding in your chest.

“Y-y-you were getting too attached,” he says, speaking quickly. “I-I-I, I know what a fucking crush looks l-like, I-I-I know you’re going to get tired of this shit in a few years and want to settle down and y-y-you, you can’t do it with me. I didn’t want to say it to you because you’d fight me on it and i-i-it’d be a huge fucking deal and I don’t have the fucking time or the patience for any of that.”

The gun is still pointed at you. Rick isn’t shaking, his brow is still lowered. He’s still ready to shoot you.

You breathe out a long sigh and lock the door again.

“Sorry,” you call out, loud enough that it could be heard from outside, “now’s not a good time.”

There’s some hissing noises outside. You see someone flit past your broken window. Rick puts his gun away.

“You’re leaving as soon as the sun comes up,” you tell him.

You gather up your laptop and your food and you slam your bedroom door, and you hope he’ll have vanished from your living room by the time you emerge in the morning.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this probably isnt my best but please accept it

The morning after the fight, you'd walked into your living room to find Rick was already gone, but overnight he'd consumed your entire stash of alcoholic drinks and left the containers all over, along with the broken glass from the window. You'd cursed and swore up and down you'd never do anything for such an ungrateful jackass again. You told yourself you could do better, that you didn't need him, that not having him in your life was no great loss.

 

A week later he called you up with promises of fantastic beasts and a good time and you'd immediately caved.

 

A couple months later and any lingering awkwardness had more or less dissolved, as though the fight had never happened.

 

You don't know why you thought that it would make any difference in how Rick treated you. In retrospect, it was colossally stupid and you could've easily been killed that night, by Rick or by something else, but it had made sense at the time. You'd just felt so _ dehumanized _ . You just wanted him to fucking acknowledge your feelings for once.

 

Maybe you should start seeing a therapist, you muse, as you duck for cover behind a crashed vehicle, narrowly missing being shot by some kind of ray gun. Maybe the middle of a firefight is not the best time to be contemplating your relationship with an egotistical super-genius.

 

You fumble with the weapon Rick had given you. You'd managed to get a couple shots off earlier but then it'd jammed or something and you don't know how to fix it. It's too unlike any gun you'd find on Earth. You twist some weird sticky-outy part and it makes a loud  _ CLACK _ sound and breaks off in your hand.

 

"God  _ fucking _ damn it!" you exclaim, glancing over, further down the sidewalk, to where Rick has taken cover behind what might have once been a mailbox. "This blows!" you call out to him.

 

Rick looks grim, his mouth pressed into a hard line. He meets your gaze as he presses his back against the ruined hunk of metal. "Y-yeah, this blows pretty fucking hard," he agrees. "You wanna bail?"

 

"I wanted to bail  _ hours _ ago!" you wail, furrowing your brow at him.

 

He immediately pulls out his portal gun, shooting a portal at the midpoint on the sidewalk between the two of you. He raises three fingers, counting down, and when he lowers his last finger the two of you bolt for the portal. Bullets start flying the second you emerge from your cover, and you dive for the portal on the ground.

 

You free-fall for a moment before abruptly hitting water. You're completely submerged and disoriented, so it takes you a minute to figure out which way is up. By the time you make it to the surface, your lungs are burning.

 

Wherever the portal was, it's already gone. You're in a body of calm water - maybe a large lake? There's a shore not far off, and you can see trees beyond that. The colors are weird here, sort of pastel, so you're not on Earth. The place looks deserted. You look around frantically for Rick, and suddenly his head emerges next to you as he gasps loudly.

 

"FUCK!" he screams, obviously frustrated. His hair is all matted and there's a wound on his shoulder that's still bleeding, tinting the water around it red. Both of you must look pretty pitiful.

 

"That  _ sucked _ !" you say again, angrily splashing water at him. You're throwing a little bit of a tantrum but you're too angry to care.

 

"I-I-I know it sucked, I said it sucked, you don't need to tell  _ me _ it sucked!" he yells back as he bobs towards the shore, not bothering to swim properly.

 

You start half-heartedly doggy paddling in the same direction. "It was your stupid idea."

 

"Oh, excuuUUUuuse me for one of my  _ millions  _ of ideas being bad!"

 

"You should've listened to me, I told you it was bad."

 

Your feet hit sand and rocks finally, and both of you start wading, your clothes heavy with water, dragging you down.

 

"I-I-I fucking get it, okay?" he says, spreading his arms wide and rolling his eyes. "Can you stop fucking chafing my balls already? It was a bad fucking idea, this is me admitting I was wrong and you were right, are you happy now?"

 

You aren't happy. The water sloshes noisily as you walk through the last foot before the shore. You shiver. It’s not cold out but the wet fabric on your skin is sucking up all your warmth.

 

The two of you stand uncomfortably on the rocky beach, wringing the worst of the water out of your clothes, and then he leads you to a cabin near the edge of the woods. It's one of his safe houses, you assume, somewhere he comes to store shit he doesn't want anyone else to find or somewhere for him to hide from his family. There are no other buildings nearby, just sand and trees and water.

 

He peels off his lab coat as soon as he's inside, hanging it on a coat rack. You look around the weird little shack. Everything's dusty, like no one has been here in ages, but aside from that it looks like a normal lakeside cabin. There's a little kitchenette, a fireplace, a bed, all perfectly average looking. The only things that hint what kind of person frequents here are the discarded blueprints and mathematical scribblings on a desk near a window.

 

"Whu-why are you still acting all pissy?" he asks, leaning against the door after he shuts it behind you.

 

You shoot him a glare. "I'm not 'acting all pissy.'"

 

"You are, y-you, you're acting - you're being a real bitch today, what the fuck are you so mad about?" He points at you accusingly as he says it, looking unimpressed and judgemental, and suddenly you feel like you're on trial.

 

"Oh, so when I want answers on why I'm being treated poorly, I get ghosted for three months, but when YOU want answers, you take me to a cabin and corner me?" You spit it out before you have time to think about it. You can't help it. You've been stewing in it all day, ever since he blatantly ignored your opinion on his plan earlier.

 

His mouth hangs open as he stares at you for a moment. His brow furrows. “Y-you - you’re seriously still dwelling on that? Are you fucking kidding me?”

 

“I’ve known you for - how long? Years? And you don’t even respect me enough give me a courtesy text -”

 

“Respect?” he scoffs, interrupting you. “You think I don’t fuckin’  _ respect _ you? Th-that I somehow think you’re fuckin’ - fuckin’ - that I respect you any less than anyone else?”

 

You can feel rage bubbling deep in your gut. You don’t even know why, because it’s not as though he’s saying anything out of the ordinary. He’s not even overtly insulting you, only saying he sees you as equal to any average person. “You assumed I was going to go all crazy if you told me you weren’t into anything serious, as though I didn’t already know that! As though I’m some dumb broad -”

 

“Oh, l-like you’re doing a great job of proving otherwise?” he says, snorting. He crosses his arms and looks all smug, like he’s already won the argument, and your anger boils over. “Getting - getting all hysterical over -”

 

“I’m allowed to have feelings, Rick!” you scream, stepping forward and getting in his face, raising a finger at him to invade his space further. “It doesn’t make me a fucking dumbass, we can’t all numb ourselves all the time like you do!” Your face feels warm. You’re embarrassed but you’re too angry to stop. “You act like getting ‘attached’ to people in any capacity is a bad thing, like the fact that you don’t care about anyone makes you superior somehow, but the fact is you’re just the odd one out, and deep down you  _ HATE  _ it!”

 

He looks at you with something that looks like a mix of disgust and disbelief, his eyes wide and his brow bunched up and his mouth slightly ajar. He lets out a groan that turns into a frustrated yell and storms towards the bed, yanking his shirt over his head as he goes. He spikes it onto the floor with a wet splat and sits at the edge of the mattress, resting his head in his hands. He mutters something under his breath, too quietly for you to hear, and then, louder, but in a weak voice, he says, “Y-you don’t know  _ shit  _ about me. Don’t act like you’ve got me all fuckin’ figured out.”

 

“That’s not - ugh, forget it,” you groan. You massage your temples, stepping towards him again. You take a few calming breaths. This argument has gotten completely out of control. “I’m not trying to  _ fix  _ you or some shit. I’m just asking you to just have a little decency if you want to keep me around and not expect me to be as detached as you. Or at least be honest if all you see me as is some fucktoy.”

 

His body is tense and his hands are balled into fists, resting on top of his knees. Shirtless, like this, he almost looks small because he’s so wiry. His collar bones jut out and you watch his throat move as he swallows hard, like he’s struggling with something. The wound on his shoulder, now that you can see it clearly, doesn’t seem that bad, but it only adds to how uncharacteristically pathetic he looks at the moment. You feel a pang of sympathy and maybe something else.

 

He grinds his teeth for a moment before he speaks again. “That’s why it’s a fucking issue, th-that’s why - if you were dumb, if you were just some shitty, stupid slut I was fucking for fun, none of this would fucking matter. The problem is you’re like some parasite -” he raises his hands, forming claws and making a grabbing motion in the air - “sticking your little hooks into me and trying to force me into giving a shit and I-I-I,  _ I’m not gonna do that _ .” He shakes his head at you and glares, but somehow it feels like he’s doing it more to reassure himself.

 

You moan loudly, exaggeratedly. “Since when has anyone been able to make you do anything?” You roll your eyes and his expression morphs from anger to gentle exasperation. You don’t want to fight anymore and the heat of your anger is already dying down in to pure, shameful embarrassment at having thrown a fit, so you grin sheepishly and try to crack a joke. “Listen, if you’ve fallen for my  _ immeasurable  _ charm and sex appeal, you should just admit it. I bet you’d feel much -”

 

He suddenly bolts off the bed, taking long strides towards you. He backs you up against the wall, his hand at your throat, not threateningly but surprisingly gentle, his thumb resting at your jaw, and his mouth unbelievably close to yours. “Shut up, just shut the fuck up,” he mutters, and then he kisses you.

 

Immediately you wrap your arms around him and put your hands on his back. His skin is damp and cold from the swim earlier and you can feel the bumps of his spine under the tips of your fingers. You kiss back aggressively, and he responds eagerly, biting at your lips and pressing his tongue against yours. He’s sloppy with it, unfocused, and he soon abandons your mouth to kiss and lick a line over your jaw and towards your ear.

 

“Just - don’t -” he mumbles, mouthing your skin. “Why do you have to get so serious about it? I-If you’re fine with this being casual then why does it matter -”

 

“‘Fuckbuddies’ still has the word ‘buddies’ in it,” you say, interrupting him, your hands scrambling against his skin, looking for something to hold on to. “I put up with _ so much _ of your shit. Just accept that I need you to put a tiny amount of effort towards maintaining our friendship.”

 

He grunts. “Fine.”

 

“Say you’re sorry,” you tease, deliberately using a sing-song voice like you’re scolding a child.

 

He snorts and grabs at your hips. “Y-y-you, you fucking won, okay, isn’t that enough for you?”

 

You hum thoughtfully in response. His hot breath on your face is making your stomach flip and your legs feel weak. The argument already feels like it happened eons ago.

 

“I-I’m, I’m so fucking pissed that you always look hot when you give me some stupid lecture,” he says, his nose pressed against your hair. “Standing there all stern and wagging your finger at me. Like a, like you’re my fuckin’ teacher or something.”

 

You choke out a laugh. “You’re, like, fifty years older than me.”

 

He barks out a laugh. “I’m not allowed to want to feel young again?”

 

He starts pulling at your clothes and you oblige, helping him get the wet shirt over your head and kicking your pants and panties off once he gets them down to your ankles. He kisses a trail down your neck and when his hot breath hits the cold, wet skin that had been covered in wet fabric, you realize just how freezing you’d been this entire time. He dips his head down and you arch your back as his lips ghost over your breasts. He flicks his tongue against one of your nipples and then suddenly bites down hard. You let out little whimpers as one of his hands gropes your other breast.

 

“Fuuuck, that’s hot. You into this?” he asks, pausing his movements for a moment and pulling away from your chest. “You seem into it, but I know we just fought, so if you’re still fucked up about it, I get it, i-if, if you need a minute.” 

 

“No, it’s okay,” you insist, a little breathless. “I feel better about it now.” And you’re a little surprised to find that it’s true, that you do feel better, in spite of his ‘parasite’ comment. “Are you cool with it?”

 

He chuckles and licks your collarbone. “No, I-I-I’m still sooooo fucking fff-fucked up that you were right about something,” he mocks. “Yes, dumbass, I’m already over it. I-I-I, I’m not that fragile.”

He pulls you closer to him, and as his hips bump against yours, you realize he’s already hard. His mouth is back on yours again, hot and insistent, as he starts walking backwards towards the bed. His hands move from your hips to your lower back, guiding you, making you follow him.

 

He turns you around abruptly, the back of your knees bumping into the thin mattress, and you lose your balance. His hands are grabbing at your pants as soon as you’re laying down. His brow is lowered and his face is flushed.

 

“I’m gonna fuck you nice and hard, baby,” he says, his voice low and a little bit hoarse from shouting so much earlier, during the firefight and the little tiff the two of you just had. “You - would you like that, baby?”

 

You do your best not to roll your eyes again at the dramatic increase in the number of pet names he’s using. You always found it just a little corny that he uses them so much in bed, but he likes to talk and you like to hear his voice, so you’ve never criticized it. Instead, you just let out a breathy, “Yes, please.”

 

He has a hell of a time wrangling your legs out of your shoes and wet pants, and he shoots you a scathing look when you laugh at him a little. You watch him, trying to gauge whether he’s actually mad, but when you let out an unattractive snort the look on his face immediately dissipates and the corners of his mouth twitch upwards.

 

He finally gets you undressed and immediately leans back over you, nipping and kissing his way up your neck before catching your lips in another heated kiss. You hear him fumbling with his belt buckle, and when he pulls back, you notice he’s opted to just push his own pants down to his thighs rather than repeat the process of wrestling with wet clothes.

 

“Flip over,” he demands, already grabbing at your hips to help you with it. 

 

You find yourself on your stomach, with your legs hanging off the bed, but it’s low enough to the ground that you’re basically just leaning over. Your bare feet slide a little on the wooden floor, still wet from the lake. Rick grabs roughly at your ass, grunting as his hands trail up over your hips and then back down to grab at you again.

 

You feel one of his hands leave you. “How - how about I give you a spanking, huh? Y-you want a little spanking, baby? W-want me to show you who’s in charge?”

 

You feel your face twist into a frown, your nose wrinkling. You twist around as best you can to look at him over your shoulder. You see his hand already in the air and you shake your head.

 

He raises his brow at you. “Nuh-not tonight, huh? Bad timing?”

 

You turn back around, fiddling with the sheets to occupy and distract yourself. Normally you’re into spanking, and normally you’re fine with sex with Rick being rough, so you feel a little silly. “I dunno,” you say, “just... I don’t think I want any power dynamic stuff right now. You don’t have to be gentle, just -”

 

“Hey,” he says, sliding his hand under you and pulling lightly, prompting you to stand up. It takes you a second to find your footing, and he keeps his arm around you, your back pressed against his chest. He trails kisses over your shoulders, surprisingly light and sweet. You can feel his cock brushing against the curve of your ass.

 

“W-we don’t - It doesn’t have to be fuckin’ kinky every time,” he mutters, his lips moving against your skin.

 

“Okay,” you agree, quietly. He’s still got his arm around you, his fingers brushing over your abdomen, and you put your hand over his. You suddenly realize it’s been a really long time since he’s held you.

 

You push his hand down lower, and you can feel hot breath blowing over your skin as he huffs out a little laugh.

 

He brushes his fingertips over your clit before dragging his hand back up, away from your cunt, teasing you. You allow yourself to make a needy little noise and you feel him laugh again. His other hand slides around you, cups your breast and brushes over your nipple. You lean back, pressing yourself against him even more, deliberately shifting against his crotch.

 

He’s unusually quiet as he dips his fingers lower again, sliding in between your lips and over your opening. “Fuck, you’re wet,” is all he says, his nose brushing against the back of your neck. He rolls your nipple between his finger and thumb, and you rock your hips against his hand.

 

“Can I fuck you?” he asks, his fingers gliding over your clit. “I-I wanna bend you over and fuck you hard, sweetie, can I do that? Do you want that?”

 

You manage to answer, “Shit, yes, please,” and he moves his hands, pushing your back until you’re half lying on the bed again. He grabs at your hips, adjusting your position a little, before you feel the head of his dick pressing against your entrance.

 

He slides his cock inside you, hissing loudly. “Oooh, yesss,” he groans, leaning over and pressing his weight on you, his hand on your back pushing you against the bed. “Baby, y-y-you, you’re so fucking tight.”

 

You put your legs together, going on your tiptoes so that your ass is raised higher in the air. Rick grunts in response - you feel fuller, tighter, it’s harder for him to push inside. You feel him adjust his stance before you pulls out, then harshly slams back into you.

You yelp again in surprise and he stops.

 

“No?” he asks, his voice strained.

 

“Yes, yes, please, yes -” you babble, and immediately he starts thrusting again.

 

He slams into you relentlessly, stretching you open abruptly and then leaving you empty, pulling out almost entirely. He actually fucking growls as he presses between your shoulder blades, your cheek and chest smashed against the thin mattress. A particularly hard thrust sends the bed rocking forward, a terrible screech of the metal frame scraping against the floor mixing with the sound of you moaning. Your feet slip and you struggle to right them as Rick continues to rail you.

 

“Yes, fuck yeah, baby,” he groans, his hand sliding up from your back and into your hair. To your surprise, he doesn’t twist his fingers in it and tug your head backwards. Instead, he brushes it away from your face, tucks a stray lock behind your ear. “Fuck, you feel so, so fucking good…”

 

“Rick,” you moan, a pathetic and needy sound, your eyes squeezed shut as you focus on the feeling of your cunt gripping his cock, clenching around him, his balls pressed against your cunt as he bottoms out inside of you.

 

You hear him release a mangled, halting cry, and he cums inside you abruptly, shuddering above you and snapping his hips forward one more time so that his cum spills out of your full pussy.

 

Your legs go slack, letting the bed keep you from sliding to the floor. Rick inhales one shuddering breath, then a second, and then he pulls out of you and immediately goes to his knees on the floor.

 

You start to get up, start to ask what he’s doing, but before you can do more than begin to prop yourself up, he’s buried his face in your cunt, lapping at your entrance like a man dying of thirst. His hands grip your thighs as he swallows his own cum leaking out of you before turning his attention to your clit. He circles it with his tongue before pressing his lips flush against your skin and sucking hard.

 

You wail, pressing your face against the sheets again, your cunt still throbbing with need. You spread your legs to make it easier, but your thighs are shaking as you feel your pussy start to pulse around, trying to clench around nothing. You cum hard, with a pathetic whine, gripping at the sheets as you start to shy away from Rick’s tongue, feeling over stimulated.

 

He pulls away and spends a minute catching his breath, then climbs onto the bed with you.

 

You both spend a minute repositioning yourselves, and Rick realizes halfway through that he never took his pants off. He spends a good five minutes squirming out of them while you snicker. You kick at the covers, wrestling them out from underneath you. The whole ordeal is woefully unsexy and almost uncomfortably domestic. 

 

He practically tucks you in, then curls up behind you, his knobby knees bumping against your thighs.

 

“About earlier,” he starts.

 

You grunt. You don’t really want to revisit that conversation and you’re not sure why he would either.

 

“I-I get it,” he says, and you can feel him breathing against the back of your neck. His skinny arm almost feels fragile as it rests around you, slung over your waist. “I-I, I know you put up with my shit and I don’t give you any thanks for it. But that kind of sentimentality, the kind you’re capable of - that’s not who I am. I’m not... this is is as good as I get.”

 

“Maybe you should consider being someone else,” you reply, and you feel genuinely sad for him. “Maybe I should, too.”

 

He doesn’t say anything after that, but eventually you hear him snoring softly. You spend a long time, maybe hours, listening to him snore before you fall asleep yourself.


End file.
